The skyline at Chisholm Trail Technology Center will soon be dotted with more telephone poles.

Not to be strung with power lines for use, but to bring to fruition a partnership that has been budding for several months...more like years.

The CareerTech and Pioneer Telephone Cooperative have struck up a mutually beneficial partnership over a new federal grant.

The American Rescue Plan Act allocated $5 million through the Oklahoma Department of Career & Technology Education and seeks to provide funding in three areas – truck driving training, nursing and broadband – to CareerTechs across Oklahoma.

CTTC Superintendent Kurt Thomas saw the ARPA grant as an opportunity to strengthen and bring money back to the district.

He wanted to pursue the broadband area of the grant and began talking with Pioneer General Manager Blake Callaham to form a plan for the application.

For Pioneer, the timing is ideal.

The cooperative is in the process of transitioning out of its cellular operations.

Meanwhile, it has made the strategic decision to expand its footprint in high-speed broadband.

While Pioneer is equipped to make that expansion, there is still the need for constant training for both current and new employees.

Callaham was able to offer insight to Thomas on areas that Pioneer was needing help to cut down on costs due to expensive training for the cooperative’s employees.

“It was a great chance to get to know Kurt and also to work with CTTC,” said Callaham.

Pioneer’s GM and CTTC’s superintendent are both in the early stages of their respective tenures.

Though the two entities have had ties in the past, Callaham said working with Thomas was important in building a certain aspect he deems necessary in business.

“It’s really all about partnerships,” he said. “Relationship building and partnerships are very valuable.”

That process has been taking place, Thomas said.

“We’ve met with Pioneer really the last several months,” he said.

“And we put together a series of training classes and will purchase equipment that we’ll use to help Pioneer and hopefully help them save pretty considerable money.”

With the plan in place, Thomas applied for 10 percent of the grant and was awarded his request of $503,000 last month.

The grant will help fund several safety courses and other required trainings for Pioneer employees, which will take place at CTTC.

Thomas plans to implement the following:

• OSHA 10 and ladder safety,

• Pole top climbing and rescue,

• Bucket truck safety and load securement,

• Confined space, trenching and shoring, and,

• Essential fiber optics, splicing, termination and testing.

As the grant was just recently awarded, purchasing of equipment is now in the beginning phases.

Thomas and CTTC Small Business Manager Dr. Daniel Craig already have selections of gear in mind they want.

One piece of equipment would help employees know how to handle one particularly dangerous situation when they are trenching.

“As they bury some of the things, every year you’ll hear horror stories, or see on the news, where somebody was trenching something and it’s really just a few feet, you can get down and it can cave in on you,” Craig said.

This makes proper safety training crucial.

“You have to make sure you have all the training about how you’re cutting into the ground to make sure your trenches are done correctly,” Craig said, “so you don’t have a collapse or a cave-in and someone gets hurt or even killed.”

The solution to this problem is found in a $60,000 trailer which imitates a trench collapse, in a safe manner, so that students and employees can practice remaining calm and not panicking until help arrives.

It will be stationed at CTTC and not only benefit Pioneer, but other companies too, which Thomas is excited about.

“That piece of equipment, once we’re done with these classes, we can use that for other companies,” he said. “Everything else is going to be specific to just broadband, but that piece will have multiple uses.”

As Pioneer continues to deploy its fiber optic network, different areas of the state will require different solutions.

Fiber optic lines will be buried in most place, but in towns such as Fairview, Cashion, Weatherford and Woodward, Callaham said they will be primarily aerial.

And while bucket trucks are common, they won’t always be practical.

“Some towns have alleyways that are smaller and we can’t get a bucket truck in there,” he said.

“And not everyone has alleys. All the cities are built differently.”

Hence the need for pole climbing and CTTC can fill a need with the training.

That has Thomas excited as CTTC continues to expand the offerings to residents in its district.

“And we’re also finding a way to benefit the largest employer in our district,” he said.

Callaham sees a great reduction in time and cost, as well as an increase of safety in the near future for Pioneer.

But Pioneer is also taking advantage of the present.

CTTC has begun classes to help drivers earn their commercial driver’s license (CDL).

Previously, Pioneer was sending employees to a sixweek class in Oklahoma City to obtain their CDL, but now CTTC is offering a 28-day course that started this month.

Half of the students taking the current round of classes - being held at CTTC’s new CDL training site in Watonga - are Pioneer employees.

“We wanted to support a local CareerTech over a trucking company,” Callaham said, “so it was a win-win.”

Other classes at CTTC are hopefully set to start mid-fall, according to Thomas.

Both Thomas and Craig believe though that up to two years could be needed to complete the classes.

This is due in part to Pioneer’s large amount of employees.

“Some of those training classes you can maybe only put in 10 at a time,” Craig explained, “so you’re talking about multiple classes over multiple weeks, indoor, outdoor, so it will take a year’s time to get all of this.”

Also adding to the time frame is ordering, receiving and erecting the poles on the CTTC campus, which will also require it to “do some dirt work,” Thomas said.

This is the one expense the CareerTech will not be reimbursed for, unlike the rest of the projects, which will be funded through the grant.

To make all the purchases and implement classes, CTTC has a strict timeline.

All the training classes and projects must be encumbered no later than Dec. 31, 2024, and all of the grant money must be expended by Aug. 1, 2026.

So time is of importance, but both Thomas and Craig assured that they are on the set timeline.

They already have the money divided as half will go toward purchasing equipment and the other half toward training.

With this strategy in place, the only difficulty is the investment of time, which the CTTC sees as no true hardship.

“By the end of this, we’ll have invested probably three years of time for this money,” Thomas said.

“But for us, it was pretty easy to just pursue this on the behalf of Pioneer Telephone.”